Spoiler
This here is the first half to the second chapter of Honor's Gauntlet, a fantasy novel of yet undetermined size and scope. The first chapter is accessible through the link at the top of the page. Now, as for the undetermined size and scope part, I don't outline and I don't plan ahead, and thus my stories sort of change as needed. Thus, if you're reading, don't always expect full coherency and fluidness. This is a rough draft. And because it's a rough draft, while I appreciate any comment you may have, general stuff on the story and the like is more helpful than that missing comma in X paragraph. Danke sehr, and merci for reading 
2
When an imperial carriage turned onto the street midway through breakfast, Nyoska Glarvok dropped her full spoon into her porridge bowl. Bits and flecks of millet splopped out onto her hands and into her hair, earning her a rebuke from her mother. The younger of her two older sisters scoffed. Since her elder older sister was gone and her father was engrossed in his newspaper, neither of them said anything.
Usually, under such a look as the one her mother and sister were now giving her, Nyoska would apologize instantly and wipe the porridge from her face, but today the comments floated by her barely noticed. In all the years of her life, which numbered eight as of a few days prior, she had never seen such a sight as the one coming toward her over the cobbles. White and trimmed with gold, pulled by six gray horses, it glistened in the morning sun like the small piles of fresh snow on the ground.
Her breath and her thoughts left her. With one eye on the approaching carriage and one eye on her mother across from her, she asked, "May I be excused?" It came out as a hushed whisper.
She got no response. Her mother and sister, who had their backs to the carriage, were talking fabrics and her father's attention was rapt on the newspaper. Her elder older sister, who by virtue of sitting directly across from her usually heard her and got her father or mother's attention, was of course not there.
Her heart drumming inside her in rapid, soft beats, Nyoska stared through the gap between her mother and sister. The carriage was now turning the slight bend in the street at Master Krodoviz's violin shop not fifty yards away. Before long, it would pass right under the balcony right where she and most of the rest of her family were having breakfast.
When the carriage reached Master Dnevok's toyshop, Nyoska made a decision. She slipped out of her chair as quietly as she could—which was nearly inaudibly—and passed by her sister unnoticed on her way to the balcony rail. While she had never understood why her father insisted on dining on the balcony even on crisply cold mornings such as this one, today she was thankful. With her chin on the freezing ironwork, she watched the carriage come closer and closer. The clop of horse hooves grew louder.
The sound was far from new to her. In an hour or so, carriages would pass by every few minutes. Sometimes, she would watch from behind the curtains in the windows as three carriages tried to negotiate a street wide enough for just two. And as for pretty things, Nyoska had plenty of those. Her room had pretty dolls and pretty paintings and pretty books, and pretty shoes were a given when your father was a shoemaker. But nothing compared to the synced clops of the six horses. Nothing compared to the sparkling, glistening, gold-trimmed carriage moving slowly and smoothly down the road.
When it reached the shops and homes of her immediate neighbors, the driver looked up at her. He was also dressed in white and trimmed with gold. Instantly, Nyoska hid the lower part of her face behind the rail, but the man waved at her. After many moments, she slowly unclenched her hand from the railing and raised it tentatively to wave back, but by then the carriage had reached the balcony and the driver was out of sight.
She ran to the other side of the balcony to watch it go by. "Mama, it's an imperial carriage," Nyoska said. In her head the words rang as clearly as her elder older sister Seosnya's did, but the whisper it came out as was quickly overtaken by a sharp inhale from Evkta behind her.
I saw it first, Nyoska thought, but she said nothing. She put her chin back on the rail and watched the carriage move on, transfixed. When it stopped a dozen yards away in a jingle of harnesses, so close she could see the door handle, she curled her fingers even tighter around the railing. Her breath went out of her in a rush.
Behind her, her parents and sister were making a hushed commotion, but Nyoska only had eyes for the man in gold-trimmed white walking up the steps not to the door of her father’s adjacent shop but to the door of the house proper. He pulled the cord that struck the gong, and the reverberating tones echoed up through the house and through the open doors to where she stood. Her eyes went even wider, and she must have made some noise, because the driver suddenly looked up at her. He took the cap from his head, and, smiling with teeth as white as his suit and the carriage and the snow, he bowed.
When Nyoska realized that her sister had long since left the balcony, that that bow was just for her, she smiled back at him and gave him the wave she had been too slow with before. Then the door opened and the man turned his attention to her father. Since she couldn't hear what they were saying, she looked back at the carriage.
A footman she hadn't seen was at the carriage door, opening it. And because somehow it hadn't occurred to her that someone might be inside it, she crouched down and watched from between the iron bars as the driver left the doorway of her house for the carriage steps. He extended a hand and a hand from the carriage's interior took it. With her breath sucked in and her face pressed against the bars, Nyoska watched the hand become a braceleted arm in a bright green sleeve, and the arm turn into a young woman dressed all in that bright green. When that young woman stepped to the ground and then, of all things, looked in her direction, it was too much for Nyoska to bear. She stumbled to her feet and ran inside the house.
The warmth calmed her as she moved away from the open balcony doors and into the recesses of her family's sitting room. Still, she went right for her father's armchair and jumped onto it. She pulled her legs underneath her and burrowed into the cushions.
But before too long, she remembered that the window the chair was backed up against looked out over the street. She could watch from there, unnoticed.
Slowly, Nyoska pushed herself to her knees. Looking out over the backrest, with her hands gripping the wooden edge, she caught a glimpse of the carriage's roof, but nothing more.
With a sighi, Nyoska dropped back down into the chair. Sitting on her ankles, she glared at the buttons binding the chairs padding. She wanted to pluck them out, one by one, but then she saw her father's face, heard the "Oh, Nyoska" that he said whenever she disappointed him. She started to cry instead.
All I wanted was to see the carriage, she thought as she scooted off the chair and shuffled out of the sitting room for her bedroom. Why couldn't have the carriage just kept going?
Voices stopped her in the hallway. They were drifting up from downstairs. Not loud, just clear. "Would Your Majesty like something for refreshment?" her father said.
"Some tea, please," a voice she didn't know responded. "No milk or sugar, please."
How someone could drink tea without milk or sugar, Nyoska didn't know. She passed by her room and tiptoed toward the staircase and gallery. When she got there, she dropped down and inched forward on all fours.
“It’ll be just a minute or two,” her mother’s voice said. “Evkta, would you help me?”
Nyoska came to a stop behind the banister pillar. From here, she could see the entire entry room below. She wrapped her fingers around the wood and looked out in time to see her sister follow her mother out through the door that led to the kitchens.
She caught bright green out of the corner of her gaze and moved only her eyes to look. There, on the armchair right by the door, was the young woman from the carriage. Her hair was wavy and black and undone, swept to one side of her so that it draped over one shoulder and down. Her clothing, Nyoska realized, was not all green after all, but covered with a layer of sparkling, sheer copper fabric. Strips of the same copper fabric wound through her hair, all the way up to a small, square black hat off-centered on her head. Another piece swept diagonally over her face, covering one eye like a veil.
She had a box on her lap, and her hands rested on top of it.
“You’re always so kind, Master Glarvok,” said this young woman in green to Nyoska’s father, who stood several steps way. Her voice bounded from one word to the next, light as evening crickets.
Her father bowed slightly. “It’s always a pleasure to serve you, Your Majesty.”
That was when Nyoska realized—after too long—that this young woman in her entry room was the imperial princess of the entire empire. As much as she possibly could, she scrunched her body up behind the mainstay.
The princess smiled a bright, wide smile at her father. “And always gracious as well, Master Glarvok.”
She paused and her head titled to one side in a way that made the copper gossamer glitter in the light from the windows. “Much too gracious to ask what I’m doing here so early, when I usually don’t disturb you until after breakfast and you usually come to me instead of I to you.”
“Your Majesty.”
Nyoska scowled. He said it as if were an answer to a question, but the princess hadn’t asked him anything.
“The first matter is a silly one.” With quick movements, the princess undid the ribbon on the box. “I apologize profusely for the anguish this will undoubtedly cause. Your work means so much to you.”
The ribbon fell aside over the folds of her pants, and the princess set the box lid aside against the armrest. Then, from inside, she took out a bright orange slipper and held it out in two hands.
“I lost the other one. Any other pair and I’d let it go—but you designed them expressly for me. Some of my favorites.”
Her father had already stepped forward and taken the shoe from the princess. He was now holding it up into the air, turning it in the light. “One of my favorites as well,” he said, in the “Oh, Nyoska” voice.
The princess clasped her hands together. “Would you make another match? I do understand if you have objections, Master Glarvok, but it would mean so much to me.”
From where Nyoska was, she could only see the back of her father’s head and one of his ears, but it was all too easy to imagine the look on his face as he said, “No two pairs of shoes should be alike.” That voice was the one he used when he caught the cat clawing anything, although the cat only ever ignored him and continued to claw until her mother yelled.
The princess looked down. The copper veil and ribbons glittered in the light again.
“Yet, shoes should be in pairs.” Her father’s voice returned to normal, and Nyoska let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “But of course I’ll make another, Your Majesty. The greatest shame of all would be for this to go unworn.” He paused. “If I may, the box?”
Again, the princess smiled a wide smile. “I thank you so, Master Glarvok,” she said as she put the ribbon in the box and reset the lid. She held it out to him.
Her father took the box and put it on a side table. He set the shoe on top of it. “It may take me some time. To find the same dyes for the thread.”
Nyoska smiled into her hand. Her father was one of the only shoemakers left in the entire city who still dyed his stitching thread in his shop. Sometimes, she even helped, and her fingers would be blue or red or green for days afterward.
“Take as much time as you need and want. And double pay for the hassle, of course, Master.” She motioned to her driver, who had been standing silently behind her the entire while, and the man handed her a fist-size purse from his pocket. The contents clinked.
“Your Majesty, that’s—”
“No! It’s only fair and you’ll take it.” She held it out to him and jingled it. “It is your art and was my fault, and somewhere in Lady Devaya’s estate there’s now a doubly abandoned shoe. So it’s fair.”
“I thank you, Your Majesty.” Her father bowed and took the purse. He set it down next to the shoebox.
The princess shook her head. “I lost a frightful number of things at a party supposed to be for gaining things back.”
To be continued...'twas the best break available.
